She hid for nine years — ever since the early morning she awakened half-naked, smeared with mud and in pain, convinced she had been sexually assaulted after passing out at a high school graduation party.

She would drive across town to buy dog food and cancel dinner dates, afraid she might run into the two men accused of attacking her, or their friends. She would break off every budding romance after a date or two, and battle an irrational fear that someone would shoot her as she walked down the sidewalk.

But now, Julie Stene has a new determination in the wake of a groundbreaking court ruling, one calling for formal criminal charges against the men accused of assaulting her.

Tired of looking over her shoulder, she decided to tell her story — consenting to be photographed and videotaped without obscuring her face.

“I’m sick of hiding,” she said.

She talked of the nine years that have passed since that night, and of her hope that one day she will be able to put the case behind her.

“I want to be happy,” Stene said. “I want to be able to go outside and go to the local store and the local mall. I want to be able to go out with that friend who asked me out, and I don’t want to think, ‘Oh, God, who am I going to see?’ ”

In what appears to be a first-of-its- kind ruling in Colorado, District Judge Carlos Samour Jr. concluded that Arapahoe County District Attorney Carol Chambers improperly dropped the case. Samour ordered that a special prosecutor be appointed by July 6 and that sexual-assault charges be filed by Oct. 5 against Clyde Surrell, one of the players at the center of the University of Colorado’s football recruiting scandal, and Riley McMurdo.

Like Stene, both men are now 27.

“To deny her petition would be to exacerbate the injustice she has already suffered,” the judge wrote.

Surrell could not be reached. Three attorneys who previously represented him said they had no way to reach him. Phone numbers linked to him and his parents were disconnected.

Surrell played minor-league indoor football for a couple of years, and Stene and others have heard that recently he has worked as a personal trainer in the Aurora area.

Steve Newell, McMurdo’s attorney, said he is studying the judge’s order. He said neither he nor McMurdo would comment.

Kathleen Walsh, Chambers’ spokeswoman, declined to comment.

Stene’s convoluted journey, spelled out in court documents and police reports, began June 1, 2000, three days after she, Surrell and McMurdo graduated from Eaglecrest High School in Aurora. At a graduation party, Stene downed shots of vodka. According to witnesses, she was “falling-down drunk,” “gone” and “pretty out of it.”

Later that night, she was so drunk a classmate had to carry her to her car. McMurdo got into the car, sitting next to Stene in the back seat.

The group drove to Stene’s car, which was parked in another neighborhood, and McMurdo said he would drive her home.

What happened next is wrapped in mystery.

Later, according to court documents, McMurdo drove Stene to his home, and ultimately Surrell drove her home from there.

Mud on her car and her back

About 3 a.m., Julie woke up in her car, wearing only an oversized Polo Sport T-shirt that had been in her back seat. Mud smeared her car and her back, and she was very sore.

She concluded that she had been sexually assaulted, and later that day she went to Aurora police. At a hospital, nurses collected forensic evidence.

Police detectives tapped her phone, and in a call the next week Surrell told Stene that she performed oral sex on him but that nothing else happened.

“Julie,” he said, “I didn’t even do anything to you.”

Five weeks later, when he was questioned by Aurora police Detective Ron Hahn, Surrell denied that he had any sexual contact with Stene but allowed investigators to take saliva and hair samples for DNA comparisons.

In a separate interview with Hahn, McMurdo said that Stene performed oral sex on him while they were in her car, and that later they parked, moved to a lawn and briefly engaged in consensual sexual intercourse.

McMurdo declined to provide samples for DNA testing.

Three months after graduating, Stene entered college in Arizona.

In December 2000, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation completed DNA work, finding that semen taken from Stene’s vagina and rectum matched Surrell’s DNA profile and that there also was DNA present from an “additional donor.”

Around the same time, Hahn concluded that the incidents probably occurred outside the city of Aurora, and he brought in Arapahoe County sheriff’s investigator Joni Gordanier.

The DNA finding stunned Stene.

“I thought he was my friend,” she said.

When Gordanier confronted Surrell with the test results, he changed his story, according to court documents. They had consensual sex, he said, and he denied such in the earlier interview because he was “scared.”

According to Hahn and Gordanier, Karen Pearson, a chief deputy district attorney, concluded enough evidence existed to file charges against Surrell and probably McMurdo. Pearson, however, disputes that.

Stene was reeling. She had just learned that her father, Dallas, had leukemia and was expected to die, and she attempted to end her life, taking a mix of pills.

Stene decided she wasn’t strong enough to endure a trial, and prosecutors dropped the case.

Stene’s father died Aug. 31, 2001.

In the ensuing years, Stene fought a constant battle to push the incident out of her mind. Whenever she returned to Colorado, an anxious feeling came over her.

Fast forward to 2004.

CU found itself fighting allegations that football players plied visiting recruits with sex and booze and administrators turned a blind eye. Nine alleged sexual assaults were tied to players or recruits. Two of them were linked to Surrell. However, no sexual-assault charges were filed in any of the cases.

A thought invaded Stene’s mind again and again: If she had pressed charges back in 2001, maybe the alleged assaults at CU wouldn’t have happened.

Stene returned to Colorado in March 2004 to meet again with prosecutors, hoping to reopen the case.

According to both Stene and Detective Hahn, Pearson, the prosecutor, was reluctant to file charges, in part because it would look like “jumping on the bandwagon (against CU).”

Crushed, Stene said she went back to school and tried to put it out of her mind. But she couldn’t.

Incident dominated her life

Even after she graduated and returned to Colorado, where she worked as a teacher for two years, the incident dominated her life. When she did venture out, she didn’t wear her contacts — she didn’t want to see people, and in some twisted way she thought that meant they couldn’t see her.

“Isn’t that stupid?” she asked.

Chambers ultimately said she would explore bringing in a special prosecutor, but the Denver and Adams County district attorneys both begged off, citing conflicts of interest. Larimer County District Attorney Larry Abrahamson looked at the case and concluded that it could not be proven.

Then one of Stene’s lawyers, Baine Kerr, filed a petition in 2008 using an obscure state law that allows judges to order that criminal charges be filed.

Kerr had represented Lisa Simpson, one of the women whose rape allegations plunged CU into scandal.

One of Stene’s biggest backers was Hahn, who filed an affidavit for her lawsuit in which he wrote, “Among the many sexual assaults I have investigated, I have rarely encountered a more compelling, cooperative and credible victim.”

At a hearing last Dec. 15, Stene, Hahn and Detective Gordanier all testified. An attorney for Chambers argued that prosecutors never — even in 2001 — considered the case strong enough to take to court.

Samour ruled last month that the decision not to file charges was “unjustified, arbitrary, capricious and without reasonable excuse.”

It was the first time a judge considering the law ruled against prosecutors.

The judge also noted that more forensic work could make the case stronger: McMurdo’s DNA could be compared to the “additional donor” who left semen in Stene’s body in 2000. In addition, fingernail scrapings from Stene could be tested for genetic material. And, the judge wrote, two other cases could be considered — that of a CU soccer player who alleged that Surrell raped her, and that of a female student trainer who asserted that Surrell was the ringleader of a group of players who forced her to perform oral sex on recruits in 2001.

Now working as a nanny and private teacher for a 2 1/2-year-old girl, Stene is preparing to face the two men in court. There are a lot of unknowns. One trial or two? What about a plea bargain? What if Chambers appeals?

“I’m guessing it’ll be this time next year, and I’m OK with that,” Stene said. “I’ve got another year of this, and I get my life back.”

She knows she might not see either man convicted.

“I know it’s trial by jury,” she said. “I know they have to be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

“Of course I’m going to be disappointed (in that case) — but I’m still not going to regret going through what I’ve been working for.”

And then, after it’s over, she expects to leave Colorado and start a new life somewhere else, somewhere where she won’t spend all her time hiding.

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